Centaur Playable Race Guide for D&D 5e

Gallop into battle as a Centaur with our optimisation guide

What are centaurs?

Part humanoid, part horse, centaurs have the advantages of a powerful, equine lower-half with the intellect and dexterous limbs of a humanoid’s upper-half. Of course, anatomically, this is awkward in a bunch of different ways (thankfully, centaurs are mythical creatures and we don’t need to deal with the complications of what they eat or even how they sleep comfortably). In D&D 5e, these complications are mostly brushed over with some simplified mechanics to prevent centaurs becoming too cumbersome for a party (particularly if they have to climb a wall or something similarly difficult with hooves).

Centaurs originally hail from the Feywild and like most fey creatures (like Elves) they are at one with nature and often serve as protectors of forests and other bastions of the natural world. For this reason, they tend to dislike Humans and Dwarves who tend to have a more callous attitude towards nature and often will destroy it for their own benefit such as with deforestation to build vast cities.

Centaurs were first introduced to D&D 5e as a playable race in Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica and have since been updated in Monsters of the Multiverse. Our guide below will tell you everything you need to know to play and optimise one of these proud characters.

Is a Centaur the right race for me?

Dungeons and Dragons lets you take a flexible approach to building a character, but if you’re going to stick to typical culture and the best-optimised build for a Centaur you might consider the following:

Choose a Centaur if you like…

Being fast!
Charging into the thick of battle and kicking things
Being weirdly proportioned

A Centaur might not be for you if…

You don’t need/want to move much
Don’t want to play a strength based character
Want to climb things

If you think a Centaur isn’t for you, not to worry, there are dozens of playable races for you to pick from, just check out our races guide to find out about all of them. For an alternative strength based race, you could consider a Minotaur or a Leonin.

Racial traits

The following traits and features are from the updated rules found in Monsters of the Multiverse. You can also use previously published rules to play as a Centaur which can be found in Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica.

Ability Scores	+2 to one ability score and +1 to another or +1 to 3 different ability scores
Creature Type	Fey
Size	Medium
Lifespan	About 60 years
Speed	40ft
Languages	Common and 1 other
Traits	Charge, Equine Build, Hooves, Natural Affinity,
Proficiencies	One of; animal handling, medicine, nature or survival
Resistances	None
Darkvision	None
Innate Spellcasting	None
Book found in	Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica

Tactics

Centaurs are pretty unique, but despite their awkward equine backside, have limited disadvantages to their awkward proportions. Climbing is trickier, but surprisingly, not impossible, though some DMs may use some common sense as to what you can scale (or can’t).

When playing a Centaur, I’d recommend using the following tactics:

High manoeuvrability: Centaurs are very fast. In fact, they’re the fastest playable race in the game with 40ft movement (Wood Elves get 35). That’s very fast. Make sure you take advantage of that by being the first into combat and moving yourself to where you’re most needed on the battlefield. Some things may help you manage this. For example, the mobile feat will give you an extra 10ft of movement and allow you to avoid opportunity attacks if you attacked the enemy this turn. This is probably your best way to get around as even something like a rogue or monk’s disengage takes a bonus action which you may want to save for your hoof charge. If you want to be even faster, you can use a barbarian’s fast movement feature to get up to 60ft (but that does rely on being, well, a barbarian).

Into the thick of combat: With that in mind, to make the best use of your abilities, you’ll want to be charging hooves first into combat. What this means is you can make a hoof attack with your bonus action (1d6 being solid damage) but without the drawback of wielding weaker two weapons that can be used for two weapon fighting. This means you can get an extra attack while wielding a two handed weapon (which deal the most damage). But you do have to move at least 30ft before you manage this, which is why the mobile feat can be so helpful.

Which classes work well for Centaurs?

Centaurs are a somewhat awkward race to use. There are drawbacks to having a huge horse’s body attached to your rump so cramped spaces and climbing are very difficult for Centaurs (though not impossible). However, if you’re looking for a very fast and mobile character, then Centaurs are the best race there is as you have 40ft movement (the most available for playable characters in D&D 5e).

Below I’ve put together a score for how well each class works with a Centaur based on how well the racial traits work with each class:

Artificer⭐⭐

Barbarian ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Bard ⭐

Cleric ⭐⭐

Druid ⭐⭐

Fighter ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Monk ⭐

Paladin ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Ranger ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rogue ⭐

Sorcerer ⭐

Warlock ⭐⭐

Wizard ⭐

*Star ratings scored out of 5

Best classes for Centaurs

One of the best traits for Centaurs is their ability to charge into combat and make an extra attack with their hooves. The challenge here is making repeated uses of this ability in a single combat. You’ll likely get to use it once as you charge into combat, but manoeuvring out and then back into combat to charge again would require 60ft movement to accomplish regularly plus the ability to avoid opportunity attacks.

Taking the mobile feat will help you here as it adds another 10ft of movement and the ability to avoid opportunity attacks. Getting that final 10ft of movement is a little trickier but some classes like barbarians and rangers have these options.

You get some small extra benefits like an extra skill proficiency and the ability to carry and push/pull heavier loads.

With that in mind, the best classes for Centaurs are those that want to charge into melee combat and have high strength to add to their hoof attack. As such, I’d recommend the following classes for a Centaur character:

Barbarian
Fighter
Paladin
Ranger

Top of the picks here is a barbarian which gets Fast Movement at level 5 and obviously loves to charge into the fray. Rangers are the most melee focused class to get a 1st level spell called longstrider which will allow you to move an extra 10ft so despite their often lower strength, also get the nod for their ability to get multiple uses of charge in a combat (and Longstrider lasts an hour so you can cast it before combat and easily retain the benefits for a while).

Whichever class you go with, I’d seriously consider the mobile feat to give you the best chance of making multiple uses of charge.

Worst classes for centaurs

Basically, any class that doesn’t want to get into melee combat and use strength once they’re there. Any class you take will benefit from extra manoeuvrability which is handy, but charge is completely redundant for non-melee classes like sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, clerics and bards (other than a few subclasses). Monks are also a poor choice as their bonus action is consumed by martial arts making Charge pointless and even rogues that like to get into melee combat, tend to be dexterous rather than strong so gain less from their hooves (plus the mechanics of a sneaky Centaur are a little ridiculous)!

About Centaurs

Appearance

The humanoid portion of a Centaur appears more like that of an Elf than a Human while the equine portion appears as you’d expect, like a horse. Unlike in much popular literature, Centaurs in D&D are not the height of a horse and Human stacked on top of each other, rather, these portions are a little shorter than expected (probably to keep their size to manageable proportions). This still has them standing taller than most humanoids at about 7ft tall.

Personality

Centaurs are proud folk with a fairly serious streak. They tend to live in groups of other Centaurs and normally among nature, often making their homes in forests. This typically leaves Centaurs fairly isolated from other races though they are happy to cooperate with other races as long as their goals are amicable.

Centaurs usually strive towards peace and balance in the world but this doesn’t mean that they are pacifists and Centaurs certainly are known for being powerful warriors and will act with violence where a need arises.

Names

Ravnican Centaurs will often give names to their foals of dead ancestors in order to preserve the spirit of that individual. The quicker a deceased Centaur can have their name passed to a new foal, the better according to Centaur traditions.

Centaurs from Theros have a different approach and will borrow names from other races to use for themselves rather than having culturally significant names.

Some examples of centaur names include:

Male Centaur names: Aughus, Bonmod, Chodi, Driros, Eno, Kozim, Orval, Skelor, Tomis and Yarog

Female Centaur Names: Bido, Dunja, Galisnya, Honotia, Kotyali, Meloe, Mira, Pinya, Raisya, Saya and Tatna

How to roleplay as a Centaur

Headstrong is often the way to go with Centaurs. You likely won’t let yourself be pushed around, will be independent and will be vocal in your disagreements with others. Also, any suggestion that you be used as a pack-mule will come with derision and probably also anger!

You’ll stand for what you believe is right because you believe it’s the right thing to do and not because anyone tells you to do it. For this reason, Centaurs can struggle cooperating with authority figures. However, this doesn’t mean that they’re too headstrong to cooperate with a party, but they usually will make their opinions heard.